New York City salaries: what common jobs pay in the NYC metro area

Jobs in the New York metro area paid an average of $41.50 an hour in May 2025, against a national average of $33.54, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) release for the region. This guide is for anyone weighing a New York job offer, a move, or a raise request: it shows which kinds of work pay well above the national figure, which barely beat it, how far that premium stretches once you account for prices, and how to check the numbers for your own job.

Quick reference: New York metro pay at a glance

All wage figures below come from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) release for the New York area, covering May 2025, the newest estimates BLS has published. The price figures come from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).

Two quick definitions before you use these numbers:

• Mean is the plain average: add up everyone's pay and divide by the number of workers. A handful of very high earners can pull it up.
• Median is the middle worker: half earn more, half earn less. It is usually the better guide to "typical" pay.

The gap matters: nationally, the mean was $33.54 an hour in May 2025 but the median only $24.51. The New York release reports means, so treat its averages as pulled upward by top earners in finance, law and management.

What "New York metro" means in this data

BLS does not report wages for the five boroughs on their own in this release. It uses the New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ Metropolitan Statistical Area, as defined by the federal Office of Management and Budget.

For the May 2025 data, that area covers these counties:

• New York: the Bronx, Kings (Brooklyn), New York (Manhattan), Queens, Richmond (Staten Island), Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland and Putnam.
• New Jersey: Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Hunterdon, Middlesex, Monmouth, Morris, Ocean, Passaic, Somerset, Sussex and Union.

Notice what is missing: the 2025 BLS definition lists no Pennsylvania county. Older versions of this metro were labeled NY-NJ-PA, and BEA's price data (below) still uses that label, so treat comparisons between the two as approximate.

So a "New York metro" average blends a Midtown office job with a Middlesex County warehouse job. If your offer is in Manhattan, treat the regional average as a starting point, not a precise benchmark.

How NYC metro pay compares with the national average

All 22 major job groups BLS tracks paid more on average in the New York metro than nationally in May 2025. The size of that premium is where the useful information is.

All figures: BLS OEWS, May 2025. The premium column is a rough comparison of the two means, not a BLS statistic.

Across all jobs, the New York average runs roughly a quarter above the US average. Groups above that line, like media, sales, management and law, gain the most from being in New York. Groups below it, like healthcare support, engineering and production, earn only a little more than they would elsewhere, while facing the same New York prices.

What the most common jobs pay

The regional release reports each job group's share of local employment. In the New York metro, office and administrative support was the largest group, at 11.7 percent of all jobs, followed by healthcare support at 8.9 percent. Nationally, those groups made up 11.4 percent and 5.1 percent of jobs.

That healthcare support share stands out. It is far higher in New York than in the country as a whole, yet the group's average pay was just $20.91 an hour, only slightly above the national $19.62.

Other big employers in the metro, with their May 2025 mean hourly wages:

• Sales and related: 7.9 percent of jobs, $36.03 an hour.
• Business and financial operations: 7.6 percent of jobs, $57.35 an hour.
• Management: 7.5 percent of jobs, $94.64 an hour.
• Food preparation and serving: 7.4 percent of jobs, $22.22 an hour.
• Transportation and material moving: 7.4 percent of jobs, $27.92 an hour.
• Educational instruction and library: 6.9 percent of jobs, $39.71 an hour.
• Healthcare practitioners and technical: 6.4 percent of jobs, $62.24 an hour.

A closer look at one common job: registered nurses

The regional release does not break out individual healthcare jobs, but the Labor Department's O*NET local wages page for registered nurses republishes BLS 2025 wage data by metro, including percentiles. A percentile tells you where a pay level sits in the line-up: the 10th percentile is the point where only 10 percent of workers earn less, and the 90th is where only 10 percent earn more.

Source: O*NET OnLine, BLS 2025 wage data.

New nurses tend to start near the low end; experienced nurses with a specialty can sit well above the median. Even New York's 10th percentile is above the US 25th percentile.

Occupations with the biggest NYC pay premium

Management is the one group the BLS release breaks down in detail, and it shows how big the New York premium can get. The metro had 713,690 management jobs in May 2025, or 7.5 percent of local employment. National figures below come from the BLS national May 2025 release.

All figures: BLS OEWS, May 2025. BLS calculates annual means by multiplying the hourly mean by 2,080 hours.

A few patterns worth knowing:

• Sales, general operations and property managers, and chief executives, show the largest gaps in the table: roughly two-fifths more than the national average for the same title.
• Tech and marketing managers earn more in New York, but the gap is smaller, under a fifth. These jobs already pay well nationally, so there is less room for a local premium.
• Concentration matters. BLS measures this with a location quotient, a ratio comparing a job's share of local employment with its share nationally. Marketing managers had a location quotient of 2.27 in New York and financial managers 1.75, meaning these roles are far more common here than in the country overall. More employers competing for the same skills can work in your favor when you negotiate.

Pay in lower-wage occupations

The lowest-paying groups in the New York metro in May 2025 were healthcare support ($20.91 an hour), food preparation and serving ($22.22) and personal care and service ($22.46). Building cleaning and maintenance averaged $23.02.

Two things are true at once here:

1. Several low-wage groups beat the national average by a solid margin. Food service averaged $22.22 an hour in New York against $17.86 nationally. One factor worth knowing: New York sets a higher minimum wage for New York City, Long Island and Westchester than for the rest of the state. Check the New York State Department of Labor's minimum wage page for the rate in your county, and New Jersey's labor department for the New Jersey side.
2. Healthcare support barely moves. Home health aides, nursing assistants and similar roles averaged only modestly more than the national figure, even though this group employs a much larger share of workers here than nationally.

The management table has a low end too. Food service managers averaged $93,730 a year and lodging managers $99,170, well below the management average for the metro.

Cost of living in the New York metro

A bigger paycheck only helps if it outruns prices. The best official yardstick is BEA's regional price parities (RPPs), which compare price levels across places in a given year, with the national level set at 100.

In BEA's published metro table for 2023, the all-items RPP for New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA was 112.5. In plain terms, the same basket of goods and services cost roughly an eighth more than the national average. Rents are the big driver: the housing rents RPP for the metro was 149.3, and utilities came in at 130.0. Goods were closer to the national level, at 109.5.

For comparison, the same BEA table put New York State as a whole at 107.6 and New Jersey at 108.9 for 2023, so the metro is pricier than either state's average.

How to weigh the premium against prices

Here is a simple check you can do yourself, using the figures above.

Example (illustrative): The New York metro average wage sits roughly a quarter above the national average, while overall prices sit roughly an eighth above. On average, then, New York pay still comes out ahead after prices. But that is the average across all jobs.

• If your job's premium is bigger than the price gap (management, sales, law, media), you are likely ahead in buying power compared with the same job elsewhere.
• If your job's premium is smaller than the price gap (healthcare support, production, engineering), a New York salary may buy less than the same job pays in a cheaper area.
• If you rent, weight housing more heavily. The rent index is far higher than the all-items index, so renters feel the gap more than the average suggests.

Limits: RPPs blend Manhattan and Ocean County rents into one metro figure, and the 2023 RPPs are older than the May 2025 wages. BEA has since added 2024 metro figures to its interactive data tables, and its RPP page lists the next release for December 10, 2026, which should bring 2025 figures. Check there for the newest number.

Base salary vs. what you actually take home

OEWS wages are straight-time gross pay. Under BLS's definitions they include:

• base pay, cost-of-living allowances and guaranteed pay
• hazardous-duty pay
• commissions, production bonuses and tips

They leave out overtime pay, shift differentials, nonproduction bonuses (such as a year-end discretionary bonus), severance, tuition reimbursement and the employer's cost of benefits. The survey also excludes the self-employed and business owners.

What that means for New York in practice:

• Finance and law: If your total package includes a large discretionary bonus, the BLS figure probably understates it. Compare base to base, then judge the bonus separately.
• Nursing, transit, security and other shift work: Overtime and night or weekend differentials can add meaningfully to annual earnings and are not in these averages.
• Tech and startups: BLS's included pay list does not mention stock awards, so do not assume equity is reflected in these numbers.

Using posted pay ranges in NYC and New York State job ads

New York gives you a second data source on top of BLS: the job ad itself.

Under Labor Law Section 194-B, New York State employers with four or more employees must include a compensation range and a job description in ads for covered job openings, promotions and transfers. Per the state Department of Labor's pay transparency page:

• The range can be a minimum and maximum annual salary, or an hourly range, that the employer believes is accurate when it posts the ad.
• The ad must say clearly if the job is paid on commission.
• Employers cannot retaliate against an employee or applicant who asks for this information.

Jobs performed in New York City may also fall under the city's own pay transparency law. You can complain to the state Department of Labor, and for city-based jobs you can also report to the New York City Commission on Human Rights. New Jersey, which covers a big slice of the metro, has its own pay transparency rules; check with New Jersey's labor department for those.

For the full rules, recent changes and how they compare with other states, see our pay trends coverage.

How to use a posted range

1. Line it up against the BLS figures. If a posted range for a nursing job tops out near the metro median of $119,720, you know the employer is not planning to pay above typical rates.
2. Ask where you land. A wide range usually covers several levels of experience.
3. Ask about pay not in the range. Bonus, overtime and differentials are often outside it.

A script you could use at offer stage:

"Thanks for the offer. The posting listed a range of [low] to [high]. Given my [years of experience / license / specialty], I was expecting to land in the upper part of that range. Can we get closer to [specific number]?"

And if an ad in New York State has no range at all:

"I noticed the listing didn't include a pay range. Could you share the range for this role before we go further?"

You do not need to make it confrontational. If an employer refuses or retaliates, the state Department of Labor's Division of Labor Standards takes complaints, and an employment lawyer or your union can advise on your specific situation. For more scripts, see our negotiation coverage.

How to look up your occupation in the NYC metro

The regional release only details management jobs, but BLS publishes estimates for hundreds of individual jobs in the metro. Here is how to find yours:

1. Start from the BLS New York release. Its "related links" box points to the full May 2025 occupation list for the metro on the BLS data site.
2. Find your job title's closest match. BLS uses standard occupation names, so "Account Executive" might sit under sales representatives, and "Paralegal" under paralegals and legal assistants.
3. Check the percentiles, not just the mean. Look at the 10th, 25th, median, 75th and 90th percentiles. Early-career workers usually start near the 25th; experienced specialists often sit at the 75th or above.
4. Compare with the national row. If the metro median is well above the national median, you have a strong local-market argument in a pay conversation.
5. Cross-check with O*NET. Its local wage pages show the same BLS data and search by ZIP code.
6. Note the year. Say "BLS, May 2025" when you quote a number, so the person across the table knows it is recent and official.

Example (illustrative): You are a registered nurse with five years of experience weighing a Long Island offer of a base salary at the metro median. The O*NET table shows the median at $119,720 and the 75th percentile at $133,230. A reasonable ask is to move toward the 75th percentile, backed by your experience and any certifications, while confirming separately how overtime and shift differentials are paid.

When data is thin, say so. Some small occupations have wide ranges or missing estimates in the metro tables. In that case, compare with the state figures or the closest related job, and lean more on posted ranges from real New York ads.

What to do next

• Look up your exact occupation in the May 2025 BLS metro data and write down the median and the 75th percentile.
• Compare your job's New York premium with the metro price level (112.5 in BEA's 2023 table). If the premium is smaller than the price gap, factor that into whether a New York move or offer is worth it.
• Collect three to five posted ranges for similar jobs in New York ads, since most New York employers must now list them.
• Separate base pay from bonus, overtime and differentials before comparing offers.
• Update your numbers when BEA's 2025 price data and BLS's next OEWS release come out.